WPForms Review and Tutorial — Create WordPress Forms Ready for Automation and Spam Control!

Would you like to learn why I use WPForms for my website and how to use it yourself because if you have a WordPress website, this will be useful for you?

WPForms Review and Tutorial — Create WordPress Forms Ready for Automation and Spam Control!

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I just installed WPForms on my WordPress website because this allows me to have a lot of control over what information I collect and to have different forms on any page and even to track conversions when those forms are submitted in MonsterInsights, which is my Google Analytics plugin.

What I'll do here is show you how to get started with WPForms to make something like this on your website, like on my contact form and much more detailed forms that can even accept payments, integrate directly with email subscriptions and more.

I'll even show you a little trick to get an extra discount off of WPForms if you want to use it. They do have an affiliate program, but I haven't signed up for it yet.

The first thing I'll do is show you the pricing on this. I got the WP forms basic, which is $79 a year, but with a 50% discount to start. I'll show you how to get an extra 10% off in just a minute.

The first question is, "Well, was this worth paying?"

The main reason I bought it is that it has the ability to put forms on my website and control spam with things like re-captcha on those forms, so I don't get a whole bunch of junk submissions like I was getting on my free form, and also the ability to track conversions directly in MonsterInsights.

That's a very valuable integration because MonsterInsights is what I use for Google Analytics and it's the same company that makes this. They're able to track and tell me when I got someone to submit a form, which blog posts they came from, et cetera.

There's a ton of features on WPForms and here are the different pricing options. The basic option is sufficient for most uses.

However, if you'd like to have direct sign up forms, if you're doing email marketing, which I'm actually not doing any more email list marketing, these can be very good.

These have direct integration with email marketing providers including MailChimp and you can use the Zapier integration on this level. They've got Constant Contact, MailChimp, AWeber and GetResponse, all included and Zapier can go farther on the Pro plan.

Now this is $199 a year for forms and the real value of this would be if you want to either do it for email marketing directly and or accept payments in it, but that seems over the top for what I need given my setup.

I just want some simple forms like this or lead forms.

What you do is just add whatever plan you want to your cart, and then to get the extra discount, you just take your mouse, scroll up to the top corner of the page and this popup will come out.

They have another company called OptinMonster or something like that, it automatically detects if you're going to leave and close the page.

So, if you navigate over and try to close the page, this will pop off, but it doesn't if you don't try to leave, so just scroll over and you can click the "Get 60% off now" and this will give you an additional discount down to, for me, instead of $39 that extra 10% discount took it down even farther.

Then to finish up, you just go down and put the credit card info in and pay, and then the next form, the next page gives you this.

"Your purchase is complete."

It will confirm your contact info and payment method. Then you have the option to click on "View License Key, Details and Downloads."

There is an affiliate program.

I just literally put this on my website a few minutes ago after having researched and seen it several different times and seeing the integration it has, and there is an affiliate program, which makes it attractive as something you can share with someone else if you find it helpful.

I go in and grab my license key, and then download the plugin.

I hit the "Download WPForms" button to get the plugin there and grab my license key.

Then I'm ready to go to activate on my WordPress website.

I go over to "Plugins" and "Add new," then upload the plugin file.

Click on "Activate Plugin."

This is the first page it takes me to upon landing here.

I clicked straight on "Create your first form" to get started quickly.

However, if you want to make sure you've got all the features right away, go over to the "Settings" tab and put your license key in immediately and that'll make sure you've got all the features starting off.

You can also disable email summaries of weekly delivery. I don't know why I need that.

When you are ready to click on a form, the first basic setup is this where you can create a simple contact form or a blank form, or donation forms.

There are all kinds of forms that you can make just by default and this is why it's a paid plugin. It's got so many different options you can do.

On the "Fields" tab, this is where we are able to go through an edit exactly what the form has in it.

I chose not to make email required on my form and to allow phone numbers if people just wanted to follow up via phone. Some people don't even want to be emailed or use email, and therefore even though almost everyone makes that required an essential, I'm testing this to see if anyone just puts in a phone number for a follow-up and wants a call.

Then, I've kept my form simple for the Contact page because this is a catch-all for people to just submit things to make first contact.

What I love about and why I got this form WPForms instead of just to having something free that was simple, I then have plans to put some more complicated and detailed lead collection forms on other pages.

For example, I've got this partner program page and this sells a service that's $2,500 currently and goes up 9%. This is my group coaching, my Creative Commons license and Private Label Rights to my videos.

This is my big membership program and I'd like to put a lead collection form directly on this page that then I could have people get followed up with the sales call if they wanted to, instead of just having the option to buy and not directly collect leads here.

Thus, that's one of the values of using this plugin, to make something much more detailed.

What I was disappointed with is that I couldn't immediately add in a re-captcha. You've got to do the re-captcha setup directly with Google before you actually can add this on.

I'm going to see how much spam this gets without the re-captcha, then I'll add it on. Another reason I got this is to use some spam control.

The free form I had on my website via Jetpack was just getting a ton of automatic spam and all I need to do to control spam is put re-captcha on and follow the directions to do that.

There are also lots of fancy fields. I may add some of these into my form later if I feel like having a good time, put the website URL for example, et cetera.

When you click on any individual field in the editor, it takes you over to where you can customize the name and you can even do conditional logic.

For example, someone puts a phone and you can ask, "Do you want a text message, phone call, et cetera."

I haven't set that up yet, I just am keeping it simple to begin with to see what kinds of messages we get, and then we'll build it out from there, another reason I wanted a more detailed form plugin.

On the "Settings" tab, there are these fields where you can do general name of the form and add some CSS and if needed and check some of these other fields.

There's the anti-spam honeypot, which I am interested to try to see how that works for catching some of these just easy bot spams that come through forms like Jetpack.

There's also the "Notifications" tab where you have people get notified of when this form is submitted.

I did an email notification on this form for myself and for Michel Gerard who actually goes through these forms, so that I can see how these are working.

Then I'll take myself off the email notifications so I don't see them, but to begin with I have the ability to set up who gets notified and how they get notified.

On the marketing tab, this is where if you've got an email software you want to integrate. Constant Contact is included with the basic plan, but the rest of these are not, and Zapier, you can do almost anything with that.

Finally, on the "Payments" tab, if you want to take payments directly, this is where you install that.

When I look at my forms that I'm ready to embed, all I do is hit "WPForms" and look at the forms.

I grab my short code up here, and then I just go over to whatever page I want to add it.

I click on "Short code" and stick that short code in.

Now, when I go to my website on the contact page, I've got this nice-looking form on here.

What I love about this is then I've got MonsterInsights. I didn't actually have to do anything with this.

As soon as I installed WPForms, given I already had MonsterInsights installed and I put the add-on for form conversion tracking, it was enabled.

This now has the ability to give me conversion tracking when these forms are submitted, which is really valuable information, especially on something like the partner page where this could potentially be a lead worth thousands of dollars.

I want to know exactly how the person who submitted the form got to that page to generate that lead.

I am grateful for the chance today to teach you a little bit about WPForms.

I researched different forms, plugins, and I made my decision based on everything I've just talked about in this video.

I hope this has been helpful.

You can continue learning with us in the full class today “My WordPress Course for a Fast Ecommerce Website with Kinsta, Astra, WooCommerce, and LearnDash” at https://jerrybanfield.com/courses/wordpress/

I love you.

You’re awesome.

I appreciate the chance to serve you today and I will see you again soon.

Love,
Jerry Banfield

Edits from video transcript by Michel Gerard at www.michelgerardonline.com.

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